A powerful novel exploring how the inhabitants of the Cardiff dock area learn to cope with past secrets and their identity, and how they adapt to the loss of the old way of life due to substantial changes wrought in their community at the turn of the millennium.

Nofel rymus yn archwilio'r modd y mae trigolion hen ardal y dociau yng Nghaerdydd yn dysgu dygymod â chyfrinachau'r gorffennol ac â'u hunaniaeth ac yn addasu i golli hen ffordd o fyw yn sgil newidiadau sylweddol i'w cymuned ar droad y milflwydd.

Devotees of John Williams's novels of Cardiff low-life will be relieved - though hardly surprised - to discover that his Prince of Wales is not Charles son of Elizabeth, devotee of organic farming and Georgian architecture, but a one-time porn cinema. Around this relic of a bygone age orbits a motley cast of characters swept along (waving, drowning, sometimes both) in the rat race that's contemporary city life.

First there is Bobby Ranger, black female pimp. Bobby has reached a watershed. The disappearance of old haunts - the Cardiff docklands, Tiger Bay - demands a new approach if her age-old trade is to survive. An upmarket relocation, website promotion. And then there is the question of Bobby's unknown-to-her father. The time has come to track down the mysterious Troy Thursday.

Second up is Pete Duke, Post journalist. Dissatisfied with his safe, unchallenging suburban life, Pete has upped and left his wife and kids, and now finds himself zipping along in the fast lane: booze, drugs, sex and danger shaken not stirred in a heady cocktail.

Linking these principals are the ambiguous figures of Kim, an ambitious maker of television documentaries, and Leslie St Clair, legendary ex-boxer, ex-singer and ex-porn king, now a member of a business consortium manoeuvring to develop a shopping mall. Rumour has it that in the obscure long-ago in The Prince of Wales, St Clair didn't stop at showing porn films - he made them too, with underage kids… The hunt is on to find the evidence, and to unmask him.

A cover-quotation from Niall Griffiths describes Williams as a Celtic tiger "roaring, ravening, streaked in blood, perpetually on the prowl". Well, maybe that's what he is in other books, but not in this one. The Prince of Wales is a soft-centred comedy fuelled by nostalgia (the author's diffused through the characters') for the passing of the old, rough but honest Cardiff, in favour of (L. St C's term) an "identikit city" of multiplex cinemas and chain-shops piled high with branded goods. Read the book for Williams's breakneck, colloquial prose, in which the memoried old and the brash new clash and achieve a working accommodation of sorts.

Richard Poole

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.